Jackie Tileston

Jackie Tileston’s latest exhibition, Just This, at Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas, presents a captivating array of new paintings and works on paper that invite viewers into a realm where meditation and trance techniques converge through the lens of automatic drawing. This exhibition showcases Tileston’s ability to transform her practices into topographic energy maps of unknown realms, where visual expressions of cosmic play and sound waves emerge from a field of potential. 

Tileston’s work draws from the nondual traditions of ancient India, where consciousness is seen as the fundamental essence of the universe. Her paintings and drawings explore this concept, depicting how a unified field of blissful awareness vibrates and separates into infinite points of individual perspectives. Through her art, Tileston asks whether “deep perceiving” can catalyze experiences of non-ordinary states of consciousness and if these experiences can help evolve new paradigms of interconnectedness.

The exhibition features mixed media works on linen, predominantly employing oil and acrylic, with gouache and marker making occasional appearances. Tileston’s intricate networks of media and line, set against their gray linen underpinnings, effectively convey the complexity of energy applied in space. The diversity in her color palette is equally beguiling, with no two pieces following the same color quanta. The collection ranges from dark to bright, and one-piece bursts with ecstatic pink. Clouds of aura bubble as brushstrokes stipple atop, evoking a sense of cosmic energy.

Tileston’s background as a “third culture kid,” having lived in the Philippines, India, England, France, and the U.S., informs her layered and contemplative paintings. This sense of belonging everywhere and nowhere creates a unique pictorial vocabulary and symbolism that permeates her work. One cannot help but wonder if Tileston has ever dreamed of visiting the Large Hadron Collider or ITER, as her work seems to mirror the intricate and mysterious forces of the universe.